


a niche in his chest

by misandrywitch



Series: a soft epilogue [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Or not, Saying Feelings Out Loud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:07:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8883322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misandrywitch/pseuds/misandrywitch
Summary: Something sticks inside Kent’s throat even though he isn’t even saying anything, and he doesn’t have an explanation for that. Or5 times Kent Parson didn't say "I love you," + 1 time he did





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is a) the long awaited sequel to 'like a wheel inside you' that i've been trying to figure out how to write for months & months & months b) the first time i've written in kp's point of view which makes me very nervous so please tell me if i did alright and c) probably the last check please fic i'm ever gonna write unless something very dramatic & world-ending happens. wild right. love you all.
> 
> title's from 'road music' by siken bc i'm uncreative. "There's a niche in his chest  
> where a heart would fit perfectly  
> and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place—  
> well then, game over."
> 
> im sure it's glaringly obvious that as usual i dont know anything abt hockey. problem? email me never
> 
> junosteeled.tumblr.com

1. 

 

As someone who has, at times, a real myriad of problems, Kent tries his best to avoid quantifying them. Or qualifying them, truth be told. It’s a somewhat unavoidable part of the human experience though, and the litany that runs through his head occasionally sneaks up on him with some doozies. A serious case of potty mouth. A stubborn commitment to impossible situations that would be admirable if it wasn’t so damn sad. A cat that keeps dragging half-eaten bird carcasses into the house and leaving them on the pillow. A bum elbow. A boyfriend who likes camping.

That last one bears repeating. The combination of words that should be ludicrous or straight-up impossible given the fact that his life is the way it is, but there it is. He doesn’t know what part is more ridiculous.

Boyfriend.

Camping.

No -- it’s the second one. Some kind of cruel twist of fate.

He usually spends the first weekend of the summer either, depending on the outcome of the season, celebrating or wallowing in that year’s accomplishments, recovering from any latent injuries, doing the excess amount of laundry that always builds up every year, and getting very drunk. But not this year. This year --

“I hope you know,” he says out loud, as if voicing his complaints will somehow put this ridiculous situation into perspective. It doesn’t. “I hope you’re aware that I’m a victim in this.”

In the driver’s side seat, the six-foot-tall long-nosed plaid-wearing cause of half of Kent’s problems at the moment grins like he isn’t currently busy inventing a new way to make Kent’s life miserable.

“Sure,” Jeff says, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music that’s coming through the car’s speakers. “Kicking and screaming and everything.”

“I just want you to know,” Kent says.

“Your compliance is noted,” Jeff says, “and will be considered when our overlords come for us.”

“Why are you always so fucking weird, man?”

“You like it.”

Which is, of course, the problem. To anyone else in the world Kent would have said something like “Fuck no I will not be driving to Durango, Colorado with you the first weekend of the summer to get in tune with nature and encounter some horrific insects and sleep on the ground next to the dirt, I will be laying in my lawn chair drinking this entire jug of Carlo Rossi and not moving for the next week and a half.”

But Jeff had asked. Kent had said no, naturally. And Jeff had grinned at him with a grin that was enthusiastically bordering on unhinged, an expression that always seems to adorn the faces of people who unironically enjoy things like granola and strappy waterproof sandals and the outdoors.

And if that means that Kent is now sitting in the passenger seat of Jeff’s Subaru which is crammed with things made out of polyester and zippers watching the southern Colorado highway roll by - well.

Men have done stranger things for the men they care about.

Don’t tell anybody he said that.

“It is pretty,” he says as the scenery slides by the window. He rolls it down a little so the breeze ruffles his hair, and Jeff punches him in the arm, grinning.

“Put on something upbeat, would you?” He says, and Kent obliges. ABBA is as ABBA does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“This better be worth it,” Kent says, several more hours later when they finally near their destination. His legs are cramped and he smells like the inside of a car and he wants a beer. “Because the knowledge that we’re gonna have to drive back across the entire state of Utah on the way home is not fortifying.”

Jeff is handing money over to an elderly man sitting in a camp chair outside an RV, and solidly ignores him. Utah had been pretty in a strange, big-sky way, red rocks and long stretches of scrub trees and craggy formations and weird towns. This is quite different - green with running water and white-barked trees.

“You slept through, like, fifty percent of Utah anyway,” Jeff thanks the campground owner and hops back in the car, starts the engine. “I thought you were listening to me and looked over and you were drooling all over the window.”

The car bumps over a dirt path lined with trees. Kent can see the tops of some other tents tucked away among the foliage. “To be fair,” he says, “I did listen to everything you said about ranking your preferred method of kicking the bucket before I fell asleep. Unless I dreamed that. So props to me.”

“Car accidents and hospitals are not for me,” Jeff frowns as he navigates over a bump in the road. “Just shoot me into space and leave me there. This is our spot.” He parks the car and opens the door, smiling again. Kent does the same, leaning one hip against the hood which clicks as it cools down.

Their spot, if you can call it that, is a fire-blackened ring of stones sitting next to a pitted picnic table, surrounded by a packed ring of dirt with trees all around. A creek runs through the back of it and Kent can hear it clearly, bright and bubbling. The campsites on either side of theirs are empty, and he can’t see anybody else nearby. The air feels dense and humid and thick, complex and alive, the smell of the first edges of summer and all that entails. He can’t help imagining the possibility of it, campfire smoke and bottles of beer, very different from sticky asphalt and chlorinated pools.

Kent feels fingers on the back of his neck - Jeff’s come to stand behind him, holding a folded lawn chair under one arm.

“See?” he says. “Told you.”

“Yeah, trees,” Kent says. “Pretty.”

“Come on,” Jeff says, and he slides his hand along the ridge of Kent’s shoulderblade before dropping it to his side. “Let’s set the tent up.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Right,” Jeff leans down and lifts up Kent’s hat, drops a kiss into his hair then sets his hat back down again. “Here you go.” He shoves the chairs into Kent’s arms

“There are these things,” Kent says, and he sets the chairs down to watch Jeff haul several bags out of the back of his Subaru, including Kent’s newly purchased down sleeping bag. “Called cabins. People rent them.”

“Hold the other end of this,” Jeff says, and he passes one corner of a folded blue tarp over to Kent and together they spread it down on a flat patch of ground. “Do they really?”

“Yeah,” Kent says, and he watches as Jeff pulls the tent, which looks like a crumpled grey fold of elephant skin, and some long metal rods, out of another bag. He hands Kent one end of a rod and Kent takes it somewhat uselessly as Jeff kneels and slides it through the metal ring at the corner of the tarp. He copies the motion. No dad to watch go through the motions of tent assembly.

“You slide this part through these clips, here, and then that hooks up on each end,” Jeff says.

“See, cabins,” Kent says, “or hotel rooms,” he clips the plastic clips, he hooks the end of the metal rod into the corner of the tent, “don’t require any assembly.”

“That ruins the fun,” Jeff says, unaffected. “It’s like hunting for your dinner. Tastes better if you work for it.”

“I’m fine with buying burgers in the store, thanks. And I don’t think elk steaks are kosher.”

Somehow a tent rises from the wrinkled fold of polyester mesh. It looks very sleek and official, the kind of thing that appears on the cover of an R.E.I. catalog. Kent’s never looked like he should appear on the cover of an R.E.I. catalog. Jeff could, maybe, in those sections where they profile real people about the overpriced outdoor gear they wear. “Professional hockey player definitely buys ridiculous microfiber plaid shirts, boyfriend can attest to the fact that they are very soft when he steals them.”

“I’m sorry,” he says out loud, which is the kind of thing he’s practicing how to say out loud with more routine. It always feels slightly awkward and slightly thrilling.

Jeff is tossing things into the tent and he looks up and over his shoulder which does interesting things to the line of his back. Kent wipes sweat out of his face.

“For what?”

“Being a spoilsport,” Kent says. “Filling the state of Utah with my complaining. I’m not being a very enthusiastic camping companion.”

“I don’t mind,” Jeff says, and Kent knows he means it because he’s the kind of awful person who doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. “I’m just happy I got you to come at all, really.”

“That’s what she--” Kent breaks off running when Jeff lunges at him but he can’t move fast enough to prevent him from being caught around the middle. Jeff hauls him upright, a few inches off the ground, the kind of very physical reminder of just how tall he is that Kent almost forgets sometimes. He lets his body go limp, transforming into dead weight, and Jeff staggers backwards a little and then they both laugh, ruining it. They’re still laughing when Kent turns and moves up to kiss him.

“I gotta go fill up our water jug and I should probably sunblock,” Jeff says. “Wanna get the beer into the cooler? Set up the lawn chairs? There are lots of trails around here that aren’t too long and then we can start a fire and grill.”

“You’re gonna make me hike?” Kent asks, faux-scandalized, and Jeff shoves him away so he almost falls into the picnic table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He gamely sticks it out for four miles of pretty scenery, trees and more water and swaying fields of grass and wildflowers. Four miles feels like it goes a lot faster jogging than hiking, even though they’ve only got one pack and Jeff doesn’t seem phased by it at all. He treks along, stops to take pictures of the hills and plants with his phone. Kent turns his hat foreward so the brim shades his eyes and grits his teeth and doesn’t hate it until they’re about a mile from the trailhead and they hike through a swarm of flying ants. Little ones, like dust molecules with wings, and they stick to his sweaty arms and the back of his neck and crawl over his hair.

There’s some kind of breaking point in everybody, and tiny flying insects in his hair is Kent’s. He takes off down the trail as fast as he can go. In theory he ought to have something profound to say about it, the sacrifice of dignity in the face of overwhelming peril, but in reality he runs like a child from a swarm of ants until he reaches their blessedly ant-free campsite.

“I hate this,” Kent yells, and flings himself onto the ground between the tent and their creek. “I can still feel them all over me -- I hate this more than I’ve ever hated anything -- “

Jeff’s head blocks out the sun momentarily as he leans down to look at him, his face caught between laughter and what is probably supposed to be concern but mostly just looks like constipation.

“What were those things?” Kent rolls himself back and forth in disgust, shaking off the sensation.

“Ants, I think,” Jeff says. “They’re all in my hair too. Disgusting.”

“Yeah!” Kent yells. “Disgusting is right! Why didn’t you warn me -- and stop making that face, fuck you!”

Jeff’s grin stretches wider and he lets it get ridiculous - in another universe he’d probably be a fantastic physical comedian just for his ability to pull expressions that shouldn’t fit on anyone’s features - but the expression drops suddenly before it gets all the way there.

“Uh,” Kent,” he says, now looking concerned. Kent’s blood freezes. He imagines ants laying eggs in his hair.

“What,” he manages.

“You’re really gonna hate me for this but uh,” Jeff points at the patch of foliage Kent’s flung one arm into in his hysterics. “That right there.”

“What about it?”

“That’s poison ivy.”

“What?” Kent yanks his arm towards him away from the plant.

“Don’t touch it!” Jeff says quickly. “You don’t wanna get the oils anywhere else -- okay be careful -- “

“It’s gonna poison me?”

“It’ll give you a rash if you don’t get it off real quick.”

“How do I get it off?” Kent practically yells, memories of childhood poison oak itchiness jumping into his mind.

“It’s oil on your skin so you gotta scrub it off, uh, oh -- “ Jeff pulls Kent to his feet with one hand. “Go stand in the creek.”

“I’m not gonna--”

“Do you want to itch for the next week? Go stand in the creek and scrub your arm with the sand! I’ll get the soap out of the car, go on.”

“You better not be making this up,” Kent steps away from the treacherous plant, kicks off his shoes. The water is cold and mud and slime move around his feet as he steps into the creek.

“I’m not, I promise,” Jeff says. “I also promise that if you don’t get it off it itches like a motherfucker. My dad taught us this rhyme to spot it when I was little so I was always really good at finding it. ‘Leaves of three, leave it be.’ Less good at the second half, maybe.”

“Okay, okay,” Kent snaps. “Get the fucking soap already, would you?”

The universe has a sense of humor, and Kent knows that sometimes he’s bound to be the butt of its joke. So it’s fitting, somehow, that he finds himself standing calf-deep in running water scrubbing a mixture of dish soap, river sand and cold creek water over one arm to avoid the development of some kind of hell plant rash and staring at Jeff, who is looking awkward and apologetic on the bank, when he thinks it. It’s a moment of real clarity, in the middle of the swearing and the scrubbing and the general cursing of Mother Nature and the forces she wields against him.

 _You are,_ Kent thinks, half doubled over in the creek and making the best dagger eyes that he can manage - very daggery - in Jeff’s direction, _really lucky I love you._

 

Wait.

 

What?

 

 

 

 

 

2.

 

In the fall, Kent’s sister gets engaged. She’s twenty three. They met in college. Her voice is all thick with laughter and tears when she calls him to tell him the news.

“If it’s not gonna work don’t worry about it,” she says, pausing to clear her throat in the way she does when she’s trying to regain her composure, “but Mom wants to throw a party for it. It’s kind of stupid, I know, an engagement party --”

“Nah it’s not,” Kent says. Any reason is a good reason to celebrate. Parson family logic. “She wants to show you off, kiddo.”

“Well it’s in a few weeks,” Sam says. “So if you can swing it -- I didn’t even look at your schedule so don’t stress it but --”

“I’ll check,” Kent promises.

“Bring Jeff,” Sam says, cheeky.

“Go to hell,” Kent says. “Go boink your fiance. Go have weird passionless soon-to-be-married sex.”

“Will do,” Sam says, and hangs up the phone.

So. Kent buys a nice tie and some plane tickets and casually broaches “my baby sister’s getting married and it feels kind of weird to invite you to family celebrations but also weird not to so wanna come to her engagement party all the way across the country?”

Jeff says yes. Course he does. Motherfucker.

New York in the fall is heavenly in the way that Vegas never is. The leaves are changing and the air when the pull out of the airport parking lot in their rental car is crisp and Kent’s packed scarves and is wearing a sweatshirt. Jeff dressed up, a little. He’s wearing a nice peacoat that sits well on his shoulders, something he probably paid a lot of money for.

“That looks good on you,” Kent says. “That jacket.”

In the passenger seat, Jeff grins and pushes his hair out of his face. He’s funny about stuff like that, compliments on his appearance. Awkward and a little self-conscious, quick to pull a funny face instead of say thanks. A guy made of an assemblage of features that aren’t by-the-book good-looking in the way Kent knows he is. Jeff doesn’t photograph all that well and he hates it. Kent doesn’t have a bad angle. Both of those things are running jokes on the team.

There’s something about his expressions, the line of his nose, the way he grins when Kent’s mom hugs him on arrival and the way his face lights up when he tells a joke that makes everyone crammed into the elevator laugh, that transcend all that nonsense about classic handsomeness. As a societal construct or whatever it’s pretty nonsensical and stupid and it doesn’t stack up much with the way Jeff’s mouth crinkles up when he laughs.

Kent does know that, because of aforementioned good-looks, he and his sister and mom are intimidating when they’re together. They’re all blonde, they all talk a lot, they can all drink you under the table. Sam in particular turns heads (breaks necks?) because she’s drop-dead gorgeous and doesn’t really give a shit about what people think.

But Jeff holds his own, all things considered. So does Gabriel, Sam’s husband-to-be, though they both keep giving each other looks as they all sit down to dinner, some kind of mutual solidarity thing that makes Sam laugh and elbow Kent in the spleen. Kent’s mom rented out a room in a hotel for this and there’s a whole crowd of people present, Kent’s aunt and a bunch of his mom’s friends and lots of Sam’s buds from high school and college who live in the area. They’re all at the same table though, and they haven’t seen each other in a while, which means they revert back to the kind of antics they get up to when they’re together. Their mom never seemed to be able to get them to understand the concept of ‘manners.’

“So Kent,” Sam says, “is wearing boxers and an American flag and nothing else, bent over puking in the sink of this rented house, and Mom --” she dissolves into laughter and Kent elbows her.

“I think you can guess the rest,” he tries to cut her off.

“No, no,” Jeff says, smiling, “I need to hear the end of this story.”

Sam takes a deep breath. “Mom flings open the front door, she’s got like five or six people behind her and she goes “I'd like to introduce you to my children, my pride and joy!” And there we are, Kenny vomming in the sink and me without any pants on lying facedown on the kitchen floor.”

“Pride and joy,” Kent’s mom says, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah because you were never like that when you were young. Or now, even. You’re just sneaky as shit and hide it.”

“Don’t know what you mean,” Kent’s mom says, her eyes twinkling. “I’ve never done a disappointing thing in my whole life.”

“Well,” Kent says contemplatively, “you did fuck Dad at least twice--”

Sam and his mom let out a screech of laughter, and Jeff spits his drink across the table. He’s apologizing when Sam turns her eye in their direction.

“So,” she says. “Can we make some early morning plans to get breakfast or am I gonna have to factor in an hour of your first-thing-in-the-morning lovemaking into my schedule?”

Jeff, napkin in hand, sighs. His ears are turning red. “I’m not gonna answer that,” he says.

“So,” Kent interjects, “yes.” Jeff pulls a face. It’s one Kent’s found himself recreating once or twice before he realized he was doing it, an expression of disgust that involves tucking your chin into your neck and scowling.

“Don’t make that face,” he says.

Jeff, unfazed, keeps making the face.

“No sex if you keep making that face.”

“So problem solved,” Sam says, and Jeff, distracting everyone with his multiplicity of chins, suddenly reaches across the table to steal Kent’s dinner roll.

“You notice,” Kent says, scowling, “how I was nice enough to not bring up your sex life in public because I like your fiance?”

“Nope,” Sam says. “It’s because straight people creep you out.”

“You conspired to steal that dinner roll and I’m gonna find evidence and hunt you down.”

“Fair enough,” Jeff says, and shoves it into his mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam gets sucked into a whirlpool of hugs and congrats after dinner, so Kent refills his drink and loiters out of the way. He’s good at that kind of thing, can turn it on and off pretty easily, but he doesn’t want to worry about it right now and it’s Sam’s night, anyway. He knows all these people, at least obliquely, but not very well, and they don’t really know him very well. It’s a weird kind of reminder of how early he left home. There were years where it was just Mom and Sam here, doing their own thing, and he never felt excluded from the family but there was a lot of little stuff he wasn’t a part of either.

“Oh, God, there you are,” Jeff says behind him, and Kent turns to look up at him. He’s taken off his suit jacket and rolled the sleeves of his shirt up over his forearms. “I thought you ditched me in some kind of dinner roll related revenge move.”

“Still might, if you’re not nice,” Kent says. Jeff plucks his glass out of his hand and sips it then pulls a face.

“What is that?”

“Whiskey sour. You want something?”

“Nah, not really. Your sister’s fiance’s a nice guy. He’s being real game about all of this.”

“Yeah, he is,” Kent says. “Mom wanted a reason to get everyone together. It’s nice that -- I mean, you really didn’t have to come.”

“I know,” Jeff says. “I don’t mind. Your family’s hilarious.”

“You mean scary.”

“No, I like them. It’s also nice to, you know, be able to do stuff like this without three hundred kids underfoot all the time.”

Kent laughs at that. The first time he’d spent time with Jeff’s family in a capacity that felt official he’d been pretty overwhelmed by the complex system of maneuvers that they all collectively practiced to be able to curse with five kids running around. It was admirable, a real science.

“You’re just saying that because there’s an open bar.”

“Am not,” Jeff says, and smiles. “Hey, where’s the restroom?”

“Out those doors and down the hall, man, I don’t know. Go hunt for it.”

“No,” Jeff says. “I mean, where’s the restroom.” He leans one shoulder against the wall and smiles.

Oh. They’ve been at this for a little while, not long compared to some people but certainly a while compared to anything Kent’s embarked on before, and there’s something still delightfully thrilling about being flirted with just for the sake of it.

“Well,” he says, and grins. “I don’t know. I think we’ll have to go look for it together, huh?”

“Yup,” Jeff says, and he puts both hands on Kent’s shoulders and steers him out of the room.

Any suitable hotel has a convenient single-person bathroom not to far from the ballroom, and Kent’s an expert in finding that kind of thing in a hurry. When he does, he all but pushes Jeff through the doorway and Jeff, laughing, catches him by the lapels and pulls him in after. When the door shuts behind them, Jeff presses him up against it and kisses him.

“You’re gonna wrinkle your jacket,” Kent says.

“I’ll take my chances.”

Kent closes his eyes, can feel Jeff following his jaw with his mouth. He tugs on his earlobe, kisses the space right under it. Kent lets himself get wrapped up in it, the smell of his aftershave and the hard slope of his shoulders under an expensive shirt, the length of his thigh on Kent’s thigh and how he can feel Jeff’s pulse in the tips of his fingers. Someone at the party will miss them, eventually, and Kent couldn’t give less of a shit, which is delightful too.

Something sticks inside Kent’s throat even though he isn’t even saying anything, and he doesn’t have an explanation for that.

He pulls back, clears it, pushes the corner of Jeff’s collar down and lets himself touch the side of his face, the corner of his mouth.

“Hey,” he says. “Thanks for coming with me.”

Jeff reaches up and pushes Kent’s hair out of his face.

“My pleasure,” he says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“There you are,” Sam says, when Kent wanders back into the room. The atmosphere has graduated from chit-chatting to dancing, which he prefers. Sam is flushed and grinning, her makeup a little smudgy under her eyes and her hair is frizzy. The ring, not too gaudy actually, not bad Gabriel, glitters on her finger. She looks happy, not entirely pulled together and a little loose around the limbs. Sam at her best.

“Enjoying yourself?” Kent asks, and she smiles.

“Yeah,” she says. “Where’d you vanish off to. Oh,” she says, when Kent grins. “Feeling each other up in the bathroom, huh.”

“Maybe.”

“I like him,” Sam says, pushing her hair out of her face. She’s blotchy in the same spots Kent gets blotchy when he’s sweaty - hairline and along her throat.

“You say that every time you see him,” Kent says.

“Yeah.”

“And every time I bring him up.”

“Yeah.” She grins, happy and lipstick-smudged. “Cause it continues to be true.”

“I like Gabriel too, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know. I think he’s making me smarter, in a way I wasn’t before. That kinda guy.” She bumps her shoulder into his and he does it back and they sit there, shoulder to shoulder. Across the room, their mom lets Jeff slosh more wine into her glass, her face bright. She and their aunt are laughing at something he’s saying.

“Hey,” Kent says. The impetus strikes him and it’s funny, how it just comes to mind and how he wants to say it. He wouldn’t say this to anyone else but this is Samantha, and she’s been the person he’s told everything to even when he didn’t have the words. “This is kinda -- can I tell you something funny?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Course.” He’s aware that she sounds a little surprised, because he doesn’t usually offer that kind of thing up. It comes out when it has to, all tooth and nail.

“Before I met him, I didn’t get that, um,” he pauses, not entirely sure how to say this. “I’ve never met anyone who tries so hard to be a good person,” is what he decides on. He can feel his sister’s eyes on him.

“I guess I used to think that, uh,” Kent wishes he had a glass or something to drink out of to break this up, “that people were one or the other, good or bad, and that’s just how they were. And that’s what you do. Mom, good person. Dad, a bad one. You, good. Jack Zimmermann -- depends on your point of view, I guess. Me -- the jury’s still out on that one.”

“Shut up,” Sam says. “You ass. Mean to yourself all day long.”

“But he, you know, he really tries. He worries about it. He makes me wanna worry about it. This is stupid, sorry.”

“No it’s not,” Sam says. “It’s not, don’t make that face! It’s nice. It’s a nice thought.”

“It’s stressful,” Kent says. “Pretty soon I’m gonna have to admit to stuff like character growth and take up, I don’t know, guided meditation.”

“You do okay.” Sam squeezes his arm. “I think that’s kind of -- I mean that’s part of what loving someone is. Sometimes. Becoming the best version of yourself.”

“That’s cheesy,” Kent says quickly. He ignores how fast his heart is beating and he doesn’t think his sister notices. “And kind of impossible, anyway.”

“I did say one part. Another part is accepting that you’re gonna marry someone who shaves in the sink and leaves all the hair there and who likes cilantro and who asks you what’s wrong three thousand times when you look tired. There’s good and bad in there.”

“It’s genetic,” Kent says.

“Huh?”

“The cilantro thing. It’s a genetic trait. Tastes like soap, right?”

“Yeah,” she makes a face. “That and the emotional constipation.”

“Thanks for that, Dad.” Sam throws her head back and laughs.

Across the room, Jeff catches his eye and waves. Kent waves back, and something way down in the pit of his stomach, protected by his ribs and his spines and the muscles and organs all in there, aches and aches.

 

 

 

 

 

3.

 

There’s a certain kind of intimacy in really understanding someone, all the complicated and strange and moving parts that people are made up of. Something bone-deep and unshakeable once it sets in, the kind of trust you wouldn’t trade for anything.

But getting there --

Getting there sucks.

Intimacy -- a funny concept. Something he’d thought he had once, maybe, through the sheer proximity of hands and mouths and winning games and picking fights. Intimacy that digs into you and doesn’t let go, that doesn’t care about things like _hopeless_ and _unrequited._ Right down to the guts of you, the core, the very middle.

Everything after that had felt surface level, ripples on the water, barely worth losing sleep over. Until --

Kent’s thinking about this, staring miserable at his half-drunk cup of coffee and his phone, one text message he hasn’t responded to on the screen, when his front door opens.

“You here?”

Kent doesn’t say anything because Jeff comes through the hallway and into the kitchen, the cat weaving around his legs. He looks tired, unshaven, a shadow along the line of his jaw. He’s carrying two take-out cups of coffee, one in both hands, and he sets them down on the counter.

“Here,” he says. “Two pumps vanilla.”

“What’s this?” Kent asks. He doesn’t pick it up. “Breakup coffee?”

Jeff levels him with a look. It’s a no-nonsense kind of look, his brown eyes serious and straightforward and not interested in fucking around. Kent’s stomach squirms.

“It’s we-had-a-fight coffee,” he says finally. “You look like shit.”

“I feel great, personally, like a million bucks.”

“You look like you slept in your car. You didn’t, did you?”

“That’s sweet.”

“Drink your coffee, Parser.”

Kent does. It’s just right, too, almost too sweet to stomach. He hates that. He hates that Jeff didn’t even need to ask. He hates that he hates it.

Normal people aren’t supposed to hate things like that. This is supposed to be the easy part.

“Uh,” he says, finally. Jeff’s been drinking his coffee with straight-faced dedication of a real caffeine addict. “So. I didn’t think you were gonna actually come over.”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

“Guess so.”

“Kent.” Jeff sets his cup down on the counter. “This isn’t -- I’m pissed. But I’m not gonna dump you.”

“That sounds like something someone who’s gonna dump you would say.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“It might. Sometimes.”

“Well it’s not what I mean.” And that’s true. And Kent hates that, too.

“Then what the fuck do you mean?”

He feels himself getting angry. It’s like a reflex. With some people, you hit them in the kneecap and they kick, an automatic response of tendons and muscles. With Kent, it’s all anger. The easiest emotion -- hot and mean and hard to take back later once the damage has been done.

There’s a certain kind of irony in that, he thinks. There were years where he would have done anything to keep the bridge back to that summer in Montreal intact. And he did, a kind of quiet, lonely maintenance that nobody else noticed. And Jack hadn’t cared, so he’d thrown a torch on the whole thing once and for all.

“Kent,” Jeff sighed, but with backbone. “We have to talk about this.”

“Or we could mutually agree to never speak to each other again-- “

“Kent,” Jeff said, snappy. “That -- that isn’t what you want.”

And it wasn’t. It was just the reflex. Push and push until something broke. He isn’t good at anything else.

They’d fought about -- well, the thing is the details don’t matter and he doesn’t care to remember them. It was something stupid and it escalated because Jeff had said something firm and honest and Kent had balked, and when Kent balked he got mean. Which he was good at. Same old song and dance.

“No,” he said. “You’re right. You get to be right and I’ll just admit that I’m the big asshole here. It’s me! I’m the asshole! Always am!”

“You’re not -- uh. Well, you kind of were, but that’s not the point. Listen --”

Kent doesn’t want to listen. Kent wants to shove back. He can see the shine of frustration and anger in Jeff’s eyes, way at the back of them, and he wants to drag it out, dig in with his thumbs until it all comes right to the surface.

Jeff keeps a tight reign on his anger, holds onto it and pushes it down and moves past it. Kent can see it happening sometimes, how he recognizes it and stops and slows down, thinks with his head in steps that are logical and precise. He uses it on the ice, sure, and that’s the only time Kent’s ever really seen him let go and get pissed. He always feels bad about it later. Kent’s never felt guilty about getting pissed, especially not when it means they win a game.

He’s always been too busy feeling guilty about other things. And the older he gets the more he feels like his anger’s pretty fucking justified.

There’s a part of him, the part that thinks like that, that wants to push Jeff right over the edge and into anger, the real kind, the kind that hurts. Just to feel it hurt. Just to see what’ll happen. Just to blow everything sky-high before something else goes wrong.

“No,” he says, and he takes a deep breath. “You’re right. That’s not what I want. I’m not very good at this and I told you, I told you I wasn’t so I don’t know why you ever expected anything else.”

“It takes practice,” Jeff says. “I’m great at apologizing. It’s because I was a dick when I was a teenager.”

“Whatever.” Kent picks at the paper sleeve around his coffee cup. “So what -- what happens now?”

“Well,” Jeff says. “I’m gonna finish this cup of coffee, and you’re gonna drink yours, and you’re gonna tell me how I upset you and I’m gonna tell you how you upset me, and then we’ll apologize and promise to do better, and then we’ll go, I don’t know, have our-first-fight sex.”

“Our first fight,” Kent says, slowly. There was this pressure that had been living in his stomach since he’d gotten home last night and he feels it fading. Maybe that’s just the impact of a really good cup of coffee made just the way you like it.

“Yeah,” Jeff says. “It happens. It’s gonna happen again. It’s okay.”

“Sometimes when you get too honest,” Kent says it as quickly as he can, before he can lose that feeling, a kind of soft certainty in the belief that it will be okay, somehow, “it really freaks me out. And that’s probably my fault but it -- it just does. It’s kind of intense.”

“Okay,” Jeff says. He’s nodding, like he’s internalizing this, and he probably is which is the most ridiculous part. He’s going to take this home and chew on it and think about how to do better in the future and try to change. It should be stupid or cheesy or a hundred other adjectives, and on other people it might be. But it’s sincere. “Um. I know you get angry when you’re uncomfortable, and I know you don’t always mean it, but it does also suck. I mean, you’re really good at being, uh. Really mean.”

“It’s a talent.”

“You should take up stand-up comedy when you retire, probably. I think there’s a lot of space for a gay ex-hockey player with acidic wit, especially in Vegas.”

“Shut up,” Kent says. “I think it comes from being so short.”

“A defense mechanism, sure. An anti-hero personality trait -- everyone takes cover when the captain’s pissed. It’s good situational comedy but it kinda blows when it’s pointed your direction.”

“Anti-hero? I thought this was kiss and make up time.”

“It’s a compliment, man. Like -- fuck, I’m gonna get embarrassing and too honest. Nevermind.”

“No,” Kent says, and leans across the table. “You have to tell me when you think about this shit because I don’t know anything about it.”

“Because you’re not a nerd, Parser.”

“I’m getting better. And I did say I’d go to the observatory with you next weekend which now I really gotta do as, like, an apology for being a dick.”

Jeff levels him with a look, but it’s a playful one. Kent can tell that he’s feeling better. Kent hates that he can just tell, but he also loves it.

“Because you’re like -- and don’t laugh -- handsome underdog with snappy one-liners and a secret heart of gold who rises to the occasion to save the day. Or win a Stanley Cup, whatever. It’s a metaphor. And a compliment. I mean, you are a little bit of both, and I know I’m pretty much relegated to ‘best friend’ territory because I’m awkwardly proportioned and have a weird sense of humor so it’s okay -- “

“I’d try love interest,” Kent says, and feels very suave for saying so when Jeff grins, his ears turning red.

He knew it would get that reaction, too. It’s that kind of intimacy.

“It has potential,” he says and Kent thinks a number of things after that -- passing thoughts, the kinds that have become more prevalent as the autumn has gone on to the point where he can’t ignore them. They fill him with a kind of ebullient, nervous lightness, not just because of the thoughts themselves but because of what they imply.

It’s kind of painful, that feeling. It’s like vertigo. Like visiting Niagra Falls when he was a kid, the spray fierce and cold in his face and the falls thundering below him, wild and very far away. Like day hiking to a spot where you can’t see cars or buildings or billboards or roads, just the vast stretch of red-brown desert and the sky, impossibly long and wide and blue, and feeling like you’re the smallest thing out there and that it could all just swallow you up, the enormity of it.

 

Specifics?

 

Take a guess.

 

Even the captain of the Las Vegas Aces gets to keep a few secrets.

 

 

 

 

 

4.

 

For some reason, Jeff has a ringback tone on his phone, the kind of thing that was popular in like 2007. When you dial him and he doesn’t pick up you get treated to a tinny twenty seconds of the Imperial March. Because he’s also a compulsive phone-answerer, Kent has never noticed this before.

He hangs up without leaving a message, then almost throws the phone across the room. Then he stops, and he makes himself dial a second time, and Jeff picks up on the second ring.

“Hey,” he says. He sounds tired. “Sorry, didn’t even notice the phone was ringing.”

“Do you know that your phone plays a bunch of ominous trumpets and shit when you don’t pick up?” Kent asks. He hops up on the kitchen island and his cat joins him. He tries to shoo her because they’ve talked about this, the walking on the counter thing, but she ignores him.

“Yeah,” Jeff says. “It makes me laugh.”

Jeff’s in California. Some kind of family-related business, as it usually is. One of the kids’ birthdays, though he doesn’t remember which one because he’s not really a kid person and he tries to interact with them as little as possible. That sounds kind of bratty, but it is what it is. Kid tolerance of about an hour and a half, which is usually how long those publicity events where they invite a bunch of kids to skate with the team last. Jeff had asked Kent to come with him, full knowing Kent had an inescapable series of meetings to attend. A nice gesture, a guilt-free out.

“Then by all means,” Kent says. “How’s it going?”

Jeff sighs, and that indicates something a bit not good. “It’s okay,” he says. “Bunch of kindergarteners over this morning, they ate cake shaped like Winnie the Pooh and vomited up jelly-beans and had a good cry. All in a day’s work. We all just finished dinner. How was your day?”

“Boring as shit,” Kent says. He swings his feet so his heels bounce off of the kitchen counter. “I’m gonna catch up on the Real Housewives and drink a margarita and go to bed early.”

“Glamorous.”

“Vegas, baby,” Kent says, and Jeff snorts. He pauses, empty air in the space between them. It’s not uncomfortable, though. Just quiet. There’s something Jeff isn’t saying and Kent puzzles on that, on the right way to sneak up on it. He decides, finally, to just be straightforward.

“You okay?” Kent asks, and Jeff sighs, and they feel very far apart.

“It’s, uh,” he says, “it’s gonna be uncomfortably honest.”

“I’m sitting down,” Kent says. “And bracing myself.”

“Jackass.”

“And you like it.”

“Hm,” Jeff says. “Maybe.”

“So what is it?” Kent says, and he likes the idea that he’s the one leading this, asking the question. He’s getting better at being put on the spot about this kind of thing because he knows that that’s not really what it is, it’s just concern. And he also knows that Jeff doesn’t see it like that, like being put on the spot, because he wants to be asked.

Doesn’t mean it doesn’t make him nervous. Who gets nervous about asking someone how they are, Jesus fucking Christ, what kind of fucked up are you --

“It’s, uh,” Jeff says, and cuts that dead off, “it’s Aaron’s birthday, it’s supposed to be happy. He’s six. He’s a sweet kid. It’s nice to get everybody together, doesn’t happen as often as it should. And I’m just -- “

And Kent gets it, way deep down and all the way through him. When everything is the way it should be and you have no goddamn reason to feel the way you do but you do, anyway. Sometimes he feels like he spends so much of his time waiting for something to go wrong that he doesn’t even enjoy the shit that’s going right.

It’s funny, he thinks. How people go through things and what it does to them. Sometimes he thinks he’s far enough away from all of it that it almost feels objective, an examination of a series of events that led him to this point, for better or for worse.

Other times, he’s a kid sitting in the waiting room of a hospital.

They have that in common.

“I can’t help thinking about what it would be like if he was there,” Jeff says, and his voice is small and quiet. It can get that way, and it’s a funny thing coming from a guy who’s six-foot-four and eats whole pints of ice cream when he’s feeling hungry. “Which is stupid. He never even met Aaron. Maybe that’s why it’s so depressing, I don’t know. I just get fucked up when my Mom gets teary.”

“Momma’s boy.”

“Yeah, you can’t talk.”

That makes Kent chuckle, and Jeff does too a little though it fades out pretty fast.

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s always the same old shit. I don’t know, I think that the older I get the more I realize that there’s just all this stuff that Dad will never be a part of. Which is obvious, that’s how it works. Fuck. I just need to sleep it off and get some exercise or something.”

“Man, it’s alright,” Kent says. “Sorry your day was shitty.”

“Ah, it’s okay,” Jeff says. “I miss you. I’m gonna turn in.”

“Okay,” Kent says. “Uh. Miss you too.”

“Night, Parser,” Jeff says, and Kent starts to hang up the phone but then Jeff keeps talking. “Hey. Kent.”

“What?”

“I love you,” Jeff says, and then then he ends the call.

Kent drops his phone.

He stares at it, sitting on the tile floor of the kitchen, for a few long minutes. Then he gets up and vomits in the toilet.

It’s not glamorous, but it is what it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff gets back from California and they have practice the next day and he smiles at Kent in the locker room and Kent’s skin packs up and crawls right off his body.

That is not, he tells his elevated pulse rate, his sweaty palms, his nausea, the right response to this. He’s faces down gigantic men with knives strapped to their feet on the ice and last-minute tied games and walls of camera crews and his mother when she’s pissed. And he can’t stomach this.

“Hey,” Jeff says after practice. “What are you doing this afternoon?”

“Um,” Kent says, and his heart climbs right up into his stomach. “A meeting. And, like, errands. And dinner I guess? Uh. Why. What are you doing?”

“I was gonna invite you over for dinner, that’s all -- “

“I got better shit to do,” Kent says. Snaps it. Reflex.

“Right,” Jeff says, and Kent stomps away before he can make himself turn around and see the look on his face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Hey,” Jeff says. It’s two days later. “Can we talk?”

They’re in the parking lot and Kent’s just about to drive home and Jeff suddenly looks very tall and very imposing, leaning on the side of Kent’s car.

Kent panics. When he panics he throws punches, or compares Jack Zimmermann to his father, or sleeps with strangers.

He dumps his coffee cup, entirely full and pretty hot, down his front. On accident.

More or less.

“Oh shit fucker,” he yelps, “Motherfucker! Ow! Oh that was hot!”

He really liked that shirt. And the first layer of skin on his chest.

“Jesus, are you okay?” Jeff asks, and he reaches forward.

“Yeah,” Kent winces. “I’m gonna get this home before this fucking stain sets, uh --”

“Right,” Jeff says, sharply. “Uh. Well call me, will you?”

“Sure,” Kent says, and he practically leaps into the car and his tires squeal as he pulls out of the parking lot.

He doesn’t feel proud of himself. But that’s a feeling he’s used to. One he’s really great at.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s four days later, and Kent’s car breaks down, and he’s late for practice so he calls a cab and decides to deal with it when he gets home.

“You want a ride home?” Jeff says, as they’re leaving. It hadn’t been a great practice and Kent is sweaty and sore and he misses him. Four days. Jesus Christ. “I can jump your car for you, that’s probably all it is.”

“I know a thing or two about my own damn car, okay?” Kent snaps. “I’ll call a cab.”

Jeff crosses his arms. His forearms look good crossed, corded muscle and elbows. Kent misses him. It’s been four days. He went years, before. Years and years and unanswered text messages and the luxury of knowing that no matter what he said, Jack Zimmermann was never going to surprise him by saying _I love you_ first.

He takes a deep breath.

“Or a ride would be fine,” Kent says, and hates himself when Jeff opens the trunk of his car and throws Kent’s hockey bag in on top of his own like it’s nothing.

They sit in silence, so Kent turns on the radio and Jeff makes a face.

“Oldies,” he says, “really?”

“Shut up.”

“There’s bad taste and then there’s -- “

“Says the man who tears up when he listens to James Blunt.”

“That was one time!” Jeff says, and they both laugh, and Kent turns his head out the window and knows that there isn’t some kind of cut-and-dry end to this. Knows that isn’t what he wants.

“Hey,” Jeff says. He’s reached over to turn the music down on the stereo, the kind of gesture that means business, directed and decisive. And, like a moron with some kind of trigger-finger reflex, Kent feels his fingers flex on handle of the door.

“I love you,” Jeff says, because of course he does. Kent’s been bracing himself, back towards an open door. This is a setup. Staged. A trap.

“Right,” he says, coolly as he can, “uh, why is the child lock down on this door, huh?”

“Because,” Jeff says, “we’re going 60 on the highway, and I can’t entirely write off your willingness to jump out of a moving vehicle rather than have a conversation you don’t want to have, and I love you, and I don’t want you to die.”

“That’s, uh,” Kent all-but pries his hand off the door handle. He doesn’t seem to be able to sit still, itchy and hot all over. He flips up the AC and turns one of the vents towards him so it blows right into his face. “Kind of a low blow, man. Really. C’mon.”

Jeff changes lanes and doesn’t speak, using his turn signal and scowling at someone who almost cuts him off. He’s a tidy driver up to the point where he isn’t and then he’s a bit scary at it. His approach to most things. There is a square-edged tidiness to this conversation that also feels like it could veer off into something messy. Kent wonders what would happen if he forced it. He wonders why that’s always his first instinct, to run things into the ground.

Between them, the radio switches over to a Beatles song, and Kent makes a face at it. _Love, love love --_ he hits the button a bit savagely and it goes quiet.

“It’s okay,” Jeff says, once he’s securely in the far-right lane. He’s watching the road so Kent just sees the handsome line of his nose and the crease where his brows are crinkling the skin between them. “You know. If you don’t. If you don’t wanna say it or even if you don’t --”

“It’s not that, Jesus,” Kent snaps. He knows Jeff’s doing this on purpose, wielding his vulnerability like a weapon that he knows Kent will fall onto. “I don’t -- _not._ It’s complicated, man, I just -- “

“It’s okay,” Jeff says again, even though it’s not. “If you don’t wanna say it back. But I want you to know that I do. You know, face to face.”

“I knew that,” Kent says quickly. “I mean, I know. You didn’t have to --”

“I didn’t have to tell you how I feel about you?” Turn signal, eyebrow crease. Jeff turns the car onto their exit, shaking his head, and Kent feels stupid. Jeff’s no more capable of not telling the world how he feels than a penguin is of hitting 6gs while airborne.

“Now it’s a thing,” Kent says. “Don’t see why you couldn’t just let it be awkwardly implied like normal people.”

“Then I won’t,” Jeff says slowly, “say it anymore. If you don’t wanna hear it.”

“That’s not--”

“Then what?” Jeff slams on the brakes a little too hard at a red light and Kent bounces in his seat. They’re almost to his place. He can count the blocks from here. He could get out and walk. “I’m really trying to -- to do this the right way, Parser, but I’m not gonna just ignore this --”

“Why not?” Kent snaps. “Why does it even matter anyway? If I know and you--”

“Because I like saying it,” Jeff says. “Because that matters to me.”

They drive in silence through two intersections, and Jeff turns into the parking lot of Kent’s building and turns off the engine.

“What do you want me to do?” He says, and something inside Kent’s head aches like a bruise.

It would have been easier to get it to go away if he hadn’t gone and done this. That’s Goldie, two steps ahead when you never expect him to be, holding his ground and very in the way.

Kent takes a deep breath.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Right.” Jeff presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, a gesture that reminds Kent, suddenly, of his mother and how she’d sit, tired, at the kitchen table in the evenings.

This part of things is supposed to be easy. Isn’t it?

“Goldie,” Kent says, and Jeff drops his hands but doesn’t look over at him.

“What?”

“Say it again,” Kent says it before he can stop himself, and Jeff does turn his head to look at him. He licks his lips.

“I love you,” he says. Kent wants to put his fist through the windshield but he doesn’t. He holds his ground and Jeff’s eyes are warm and brown and unwavering.

Neither of them blink, and that’s something.

“See you tomorrow,” Kent says, and he opens the car door. Through the windshield, he sees Jeff shake his head, then crack a smile. It takes a minute but it happens, and it sticks with him as he hauls his bag through the entrance, hits the elevator button with his elbow and unlocks his door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5.

 

“Parser!”

When Kent opens the door to Jeff’s apartment, Mully practically flings himself out of his bedroom, stumbling over one leg of their kitchen table. Sitting on the couch, Jeff laughs.

“Hey man,” Kent shuts their front door. “You just saw me three hours ago, I’m touched.”

“He’s nervous,” Jeff says from the couch. “There’s beer in the fridge if you want one Parser, and leftover lasagna.”

“Great manners in this house,” Kent says. “I ate dinner already, but I will drink a beer. Got any IPAs?”

“There’s something bitter and horrible in there, yeah,” Jeff says. “Just for you.”

“Thanks, man.” Kent pokes his head into their fridge, which is crammed with yogurts and beer and tupperwares of leftovers and a glass dish filled with lasagna. Very un-bachelor-y of them, which makes Kent laugh because they’re a pair of very large, very tall dudes. It’s not a very bachelor-y apartment all things considered, lots of posters and framed photos of families and a very ugly rug under the couch. And a giant flat screen TV, of course, but that’s to be expected. “Why are you nervous, Mully?”

“What do you think of this shirt?” Mully asks very quickly. Kent blinks, then studies it while he opens his beer. Mully’s a hair over six foot and built like a brick shithouse, all shoulders and forearms and bright red hair and freckles.

“It’s a nice shirt,” Kent says. “Very smart.” It is, even if the stripes are a bit overkill.

“Okay,” Mully says, sounding relieved. “I like it but I don’t know if it’s, uh. Too flashy.”

“Why you dressing up?”

“Scott’s going on a date,” Jeff says, sounding smug. “Scott is, in fact, gonna be late if he doesn’t get his ass out the door.”

“Oh go bite it, Goldie!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jeff waves a hand lazily over the edge of the couch. “Nerfherder.”

“I really like her,” Mully says, and he honest-to-God blushes.

“Get outta here,” Kent says, and punches him on the arm, and Mully departs.

“He’s, like, really done in,” Jeff says. “It’s sweet.”

“Sure,” Kent says. “Want a beer?”

“Something dark, thanks.”

“It is kinda sweet,” Kent says. “Big goof.”

“She’s nice too.”

Kent’s not entirely sure how Jeff and Scott Mulligan ended up being living together because at first glance they’re pretty oppositional. Jeff’s defense, Mully’s a goalie. When Kent first met Jeff everything about him, his haircut, his laugh, his dress, said “Nerd.” Mully said “Jock.” Dumb sense of humor, lots of board shorts. But somehow they got along, stuck together in the kind of way that people who were often underestimated as not having something smart to say did, probably.

Kent likes that about Jeff, and he likes that he tells Kent all the shit he wants to say, even when Kent doesn’t understand it at all.

He brings the beers with him over to the couch and passes one over, and lets Jeff drop one arm over his shoulders.

“What the hell is this?”

“Uh, Alien,” Jeff says. “The end of it. You ever seen this?”

“Nope. Ew, oh my God -- “

“It’s the pinnacle of sci-fi,” Jeff says, not flinching from whatever the fuck is happening onscreen, which involves a lot of fake red ooze and a lot of screaming. In space? Of course it’s in space. “Peak final girl survivalist shit, with a flamethrower.”

“In space.”

“Yeah, in space. Obviously.”

“Ew, Jesus,” Kent makes a big show of hiding his face against Jeff’s shoulder, and he feels, rather than sees, Jeff’s grin and the shift in his attention.

“Since when does gore bug you?”

“Gore doesn’t bug me but I just pictured something erupting out of my stomach and it’s really conflicting with the fact that I had a burrito for lunch, alright?”

Jeff sticks out his tongue and makes a horrible gargling noise, not unlike the guy currently dying onscreen, and shoves his face into Kent’s neck.

“You are,” Kent struggles to shove him off, “so gross--”

Jeff just cackles. Kent manages to get his elbow into Jeff’s chest to push him and doesn’t let him pause to retaliate -- he gets an arm around Jeff’s shoulders and kisses him, practically falling across his lap in the process.

Sometimes, it feels like the way looking up into the sky at night and imagining what it would be like to just fall straight up feels, and sometimes it feels the way warm sunshine feels on the back of your neck when the day is chilly. Familiar, comforting, nothing more or less than that.

He’s not really sure which one is scarier.

“You know,” Jeff says, smiling, “I’ve seen the end of this movie before if you wanna go do something else.”

“Dude,” Kent says. “I just watched a creepy alien head thing bust out of some guy’s abdominal wall. What makes you think I wanna have sex right now?”

“Cause,” Jeff says, “you always wanna have sex. And the rest of this movie’s not gonna improve on that front. It just gets more gruesome from here.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Kent says. “Someday can you put on something like fucking Love Actually?”

Whatever Jeff is going to say is lost because Kent kisses him instead. Then he pauses to turn off the television. Something is screaming through the speakers and that’s really harshing his vibe.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget Jeff is six-foot-four because he tries to play it down and not take up too much space. And other times -- well, Jeff stands up off the couch and takes Kent with him and his feet don’t touch the ground for half a second of dizzying vertigo, and then Jeff puts his hands on Kent’s hips and pushes him backwards through his open bedroom door.

“Careful,” Jeff gasps, “the rug--”

“Fuck that stupid rug,” Kent’s feet almost tangle in it and he catches onto the front of Jeff’s shirt for half a second and then gets his balance and lets Jeff walk him backwards until his knees touch the mattress. He works his fingers through Jeff’s hair, across the slope of his shoulder blades under his t-shirt. He doesn’t want to stop kissing him, which is such an absurd thing to think this far into thing, an unquantifiable number of kisses at this point. Not that he’s keeping track. Who would --

No.

You know what?

He did try to keep track, for a while, but he couldn’t keep up with it. Chew on that, private internal audience to his most embarrassing thoughts.

He falls backwards onto the bed, and grabs at the front of Jeff’s t-shirt so Jeff comes down with him, arms under the cotton of his shirt and his smile and his hair sticking up at the back. Jeff catches Kent’s hands with his own, pins them on either side of Kent’s face so all the muscles in his shoulders are visible through the fabric, and Kent wrestles his hand free to pull the shirt up and over Jeff’s head.

There’s an edge of desperation in sex and it’s a line Kent is good at walking, the things people do when they abandon better judgment for something they may or may not regret later. But this isn’t that, and it never has been. They’d started with an air of the unreal, neither one quite sure how to reconcile the fact that this was really happening clashing with the kind of earnest, embarrassing desire to be as close to each other as they could as quickly as possible. Making out in the back seats of cars and in the entryway to Kent’s apartment and Jeff’s big hands nervous on the side of his face.

But this is something else, and his own bravado only gets him so far.

Jeff’s fingers move over Kent’s face like he’s studying it -- one eyebrow, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. Kent can feel, because they’re hip to hip, where he’s hard in his jeans, his pupils blown out so his eyes are more black than brown. But his hand moves slowly over the line of Kent’s collarbones, the edge of his chin, a kind of solemn reverence that Kent can’t handle. His heart hammers. He leans up and kisses Jeff, hard, catching the hairs at the nape of his neck with one hand and shoving with the other so they tumble sideways until Kent’s on top with his knees on either side of Jeff’s hipbones.

"Thought you said you weren't in the mood," Jeff laughs, looking up at him, and he's pulling Kent's shirt over his head before Kent can respond. 

"Smartass," Kent says, or starts to. Jeff sits up, cups Kent's face in his hands and kisses him. Chest to chest, Kent can feel Jeff's heartbeat as well as his own, in his throat and his ears and the tips of his fingers as he flicks open the button on Jeff's jeans and rolls sideways so he can tug them down and kick them off. He stands to pull off his own and Jeff catches him by the hips, pulls him so Kent's standing between Jeff's knees. His fingers follow the plane of Kent's stomach and Kent leans down as Jeff tilts his head up to kiss him again. 

When Kent pushes him down flat on his back, Jeff pulls him with him, and Kent wriggles a little to pull his boxers off and kick them free to be found in the sheets later. 

Jeff swears into his shoulder, says his name against Kent's throat and his face when Kent pushes back with his palm flat on Jeff's chest is a study in vulnerability, so clear that it's dizzying. It sends his heart jackknifing sideways, strange and out of control. He doesn't look away from it. A struggle. Maybe that's why he's caught off guard when Jeff anchors his hips with both hands and rolls them over, catching Kent's knee with one hand and his hand with the other.

Kent winds their fingers together and closes his eyes, puts his face into Jeff's shoulder as he feels Jeff kiss his temple and say his name again, breathy and low. 

He clings to that, the sound of Jeff's voice and his fingers caught in Kent's fingers and the weight of him, shoulders framed against the ceiling and eyes closed. Something small and persona, private, to be memorized and not shared with anybody else and that sends a thrill all the way up his spine. 

He doesn't know if he thinks it -  _I love you_ \- or if he says it out loud, breathed in a secret promise against Jeff's neck. It doesn't matter. Jeff turns his face to kiss him and Kent doesn't know if that's an acknowledgment or something else. Right now, he can't bring himself to care. 

 

 

 

 

+1

 

Kent isn’t _not_ a planner of things, no matter what anyone may say. It takes a lot of effort to look off the cuff, and considering the future in a way that might be called obsessive is the opposite of cool. He knows that when he starts thinking about it, levelling with himself in uncomfortable honestly, he’ll have to then consider the logistics of _how._

The natural questions - how, when, where. Do you blurt it out? Write it down? Practice a speech? Just do what feels right?

What feels right is running very far in the opposite direction and living in a hole in the ground for the next 30 years or so like a hermit or that guy in the desert in the first Star Wars movie, so that’s out.

But the urge to say it, to just rip off the bandaid and let it go damn the consequences, is overwhelming too. He almost did it once and maybe the lid’s been loosened and he can’t stop thinking about what could happen if he just pries it off and lets everything inside leap out.

It happens kind of like this.

They win. They’re having a good season. Kent scores the last goal and his teammates slam into him on the ice, a many-armed many-voiced monster of yelling and swearing and hugs and somehow Jeff ends up right next to him. Kent finds himself squashed between Jeff and Coop so his feet leave the ground for half a second and he braces his hands against Jeff’s shoulder.

For one breathless second he’s yelling with his face pressed into the side of Jeff’s neck and he doesn’t know where his voice stops and Jeff’s starts and he can feel Jeff’s smile, the crease of it, against his own face and he thinks --

He thinks it would be that easy, and nobody would overhear, and Jeff would look at him and it’d be better than winning another game.

And he thinks it’s the most impossible thing in the world.

So he doesn’t do anything.

If he was content with _never_ it might be alright, because Kent knows how to live with disappointment when it’s of his own doing. But he can’t seem to keep considering it, and living with _almost_ and _maybe_ is another thing entirely.

It’s like living with a splinter in your finger, the kind that you can’t dig out no matter what you do. You might forget about it for a minute and then you move wrong and there it is again, an old ache, a reminder.

The natural questions - how, where, when. The possibilities are paralyzing and Kent has never been any good at any of this.

So naturally, when it happens, it’s a complete accident.

They’re occupying the ice an afternoon after practice, the rink empty except for the guys cleaning the stands up and the conceptual possibility of those fans who like to come and loiter when someone they want to see might be on the ice. Kent’s suggestion - “Hey, wanna stick around? I wanna run through a few things” - means Jeff’s playing faux-goalie, which he’s crappy at.

“Just stand there,” Kent says, lining up the puck. “Man, just -- stop trying and just stand in the way. Be as big as possible, it’s not that hard.”

“I’m gonna ignore that you said that,” Jeff pulls a face. “Be as big as -- fuck you, man.”

When Kent shoots he makes a huge deal of leaping for it, falls down dramatically in a heap on the ice with the puck somewhere under his ribs. Kent skates over to him, shaking his head, and Jeff throws the puck up so Kent can catch it.

“Unstoppable force,” he says, smiling up at him. “Immovable object.”

“Weirdo.”

“Are you getting off shooting pucks at me or do you just wanna play some one on one?”

“Nasty,” Kent says, and nudges him with the toe of his skate. “I'm rubbing off on you. Get it? Rubbing?”

“Message received, Parser.” Jeff gets up and picks up his stick.

“Yeah, let’s play,” Kent decides, and he skates towards center ice with the puck.

It’s an uneven faceoff, for the silly joy of it, and they grin at each other over their crossed sticks and the pucks. Sweat slides through Kent’s hair and the muscles in Jeff’s shoulders strain. Kent gets an inch and Jeff swipes back so Kent almost loses it and so he thinks on his feet, something to throw Jeff off balance in order to win this arbitrary contest that they’ll forget in a few hours.

“Goldie!” He says, to get Jeff’s attention.

Jeff grits his teeth, like he’s saying _Not that easy._ Bracing himself for some kind of biting quip at the same time that he shoves his stick against Kent’s and almost steals the puck.

So Kent thinks on his feet, and he says the very first thing that comes to mind.

“I love you,” he says.

As soon as it’s out he regrets it because that isn’t the kind of thing you can just take back. Like throwing up. Like throwing a punch.

Jeff’s stick slides right out from under him, and Kent steals the puck and he skates as fast as he can in the other direction.

His throat burns and he feels hot and kind of sick, too small for his body even as his muscles ache. He can’t get enough air into his lungs and his head spins suddenly, fiercely, so he lets himself slam into the boards. He presses his face against the glass and closes his eyes, red spots and black and white.

People all over the world do that all the time, not by accident, not as a gag. Myriad of problems, sure. No filter. Add that to the list. The most shocking thing you can say is telling the honest truth, Kent, shouldn’t that say something about who you are? About what matters to you? That you --

Something collides with the boards to his right and Kent hears Jeff exhale, breathing hard. He’d skated after him. All of this shit going on beneath the surface and he accepts it, every time.

Kent opens his eyes.

Jeff abandoned his stick somewhere behind him on the ice, and he’s leaning one shoulder against the boards. His face is serious but there’s something behind it, in the corners of his eyes and his set of his shoulders, leaning in and down.

“Alright,” Jeff says. He’s still catching his breath. “You won that one.”

“We weren’t playing for points,” Kent says. His voice sounds hollow and strange. He doesn’t want to look Jeff in the eye but there isn’t anywhere else to look. He wants to walk out of here, or get closer, and he can’t do either -- pinned to the spot and to the consequences.

“You’re always playing for points,” Jeff says.

“That’s not very nice.” Kent isn’t sure why that stings, exactly, but it does.

“Sure it is. Luckily for me, I’m on your team.”

They stare at each other. Kent can feel the space between them, how their hands aren’t touching and how Jeff’s shoulders are angled down, his toes pointed right at Kent’s, like it’s all drawn out in geometrical patterns.

“Parser,” Jeff says, and Kent’s stomach clenches.

“What?” he says, as calmly as he can.

“Say it again,” Jeff says, and his eyes catch the overhead lights and reflect them.

Laughter swells right under Kent’s ribcage and he tries to put a lid on it like you’d trap steam inside a kettle but it escapes in his voice, which wavers. “Fuck you,” he says automatically, and Jeff’s face cracks into a grin. Ebullient.

“Close enough,” he says, and his grin pulls the words out of shape. Kent shoves him, five fingers on one shoulder, and Jeff slides back a few inches and then creeps forward again. And Kent takes a deep breath, feels his body move, the slowing-down drum of his heart and the jump of his nerves and his tongue on the roof of his mouth, ready to take action.

“I love you,” he says, slowly and very quietly and he can barely hear it over how hard is heart is going but Jeff does. Kent can tell.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah?” An affirmation. A question. Kent’s not sure.

“Yeah,” he says. “Jackass. Yeah. I love you.” There’s something in the repetition that matters. A question, an affirmation. _I do, I do, I do --_ the knowledge that this is right. It is right. Isn’t it? It is.

Jeff smiles, suddenly mischievous. “I know,” he says, and he skates off suddenly back towards his stick so Kent has to go after him. Kent doesn’t mind going after him.

“Fuck you,” he says as he does. “Were you literally just -- just waiting to use that one, huh? Just holding out? Biding your time?”

“Guilty,” Jeff says over his shoulder. “Sometimes you gotta live your dream, man.”

Kent puts on a burst of speed and catches up to him, slides into him from behind so Jeff flails for a minute before he catches his balance. His face when he turns around is all delight, undiluted and sincere.

 _I did that,_ Kent thinks. _That was me._

If he was living the life of a dashing science fiction anti-hero this would be some kind of pivotal moment, a righting of wrongs with someone’s life on the line.

But he’s not. And it isn’t. It’s just life, and the progression of it. The way things move on, and how they change and how you find the words to say it. Even when they’re words other people have said a thousand times before.

Kent didn’t realize, until now, the thrill in that. The line of the grin on the face of someone you love.

“Hey,” he says, because he suddenly feels like he can’t stand the space in between them, necessary for propriety in public and the acceptability of how people behave. The kind of thing Kent can’t stand, and they’ve been on the ice for long enough anyway.

“Hey what?” Jeff asks. He’s turned around again, idly skating backwards. Waiting, maybe, to see what Kent will do next.

“You wanna go home?” Kent says, and he knows exactly how warm Jeff’s eyes are even across the ice.

“Yeah,” Jeff says. He smiles, exactly the way Kent knew he was going to. That terrifies him. He loves it. “Okay. Let’s go home.”

 


End file.
